I’m crossing off two days at once here because Day 6 was spent on the road and as I’m going through all of our zillions of photogs, it appears that nobody shot any on Day 6 (GASP!!). But hold on to your undies, kids, cuz Day 7 is totally gonna make up for it.

Well, it will after we get the map out of the way…(Oh stop! You know you love the map! Geez!)

Day 6 took us from Point D (D is for Dildo…c’mon…you remember this…) to Point E which is a spot called Holyrood. We chose this place to camp for two days for a bunch of reasons, the first of which was that it offered us a chance to visit with our wayward friend, Wanda.

Wanda came to our campground (Blue Fin) under the lure of a campfire weenie roast. Who could resist that? Not Wanda, obviously. Sadly, it was rainy and freezing, so we had to ix-nay the eenie-ways. We huddled up inside the trailer while our friend regaled us with hilarious tales of her recent assimilation into Newfie society. I guess you’d call her a Nouveau Newf, but she is still a work in progress. So far, she’s managed to twang her long I’s but she has yet to master that odd H business.

Wanda, girl, if the massage thing doesn’t work out, please consider stand-up as an option. This ole world needs more laughter. XO

The next morning, Shari, Bob, and I set out to explore. We had a 1:30 reservation with Gatherall’s for a Puffin (!!!) and Whale Tour. In the meantime, though, we had poking about to do.

One of the things we encountered was a small herd of Newfie Mutant Mallard Ducks. They were unlike any mallards I’ve ever seen before. Aside from their physical modifications, they were all sound asleep right beside (almost on) the road! In fact, we had roared right past them before I managed to yell, “Stopppp!!” (Which is code for “I saw something interesting and I’m gonna leap out now and shoot several thousand photogs of it.”) And, how the heck do you fall asleep standing on one foot right beside the road anyway? You’d think the cars whooshing by would topple them, wouldn’t you? It’s just weird, I tell ya.

Right beside the road!

Female showing mating damage

Male with weird while neck ring

Odd markings

Wanda quacks me up…

Later on, after a lovely lunch of I-can’t-remember-what, we headed on over to Gatherall’s for our wee boat ride. If you happened to be along on last year’s adventure to Maine, you’ll recall that I go a little off my stick when it comes to puffins. I can honestly admit that there has been no improvement in that area. I can try to be cool about it, but it just bubbles up and explodes. There’s a lot of grinning involved…and worse.

Happily, there weren’t very many people in our group. Happilier, almost immediately one of the crew spotted a humpback whale. It was hilarious trying to get a shot off while clinging to the railing for dear life, not to mention that by the time you see the blow, it’s waaaaay too late. The best I could do was this lovely blowhole shot (I know! I’m amazing!):

Shari had a bit more luck:

So did Bob:

Unfortunately, this beautiful creature was just cruising and not eating or playing, so no action shots. Still…a humpback! How cool is that?!

On our trip to Maine last year, I was beyond excited about the twenty or so puffins we’d seen. On this tour there were thousands of them!! I was in puffin heaven! Still and all, the lil rascals make it nigh on impossible to get a decent shot – for footballs with stubby wings, they sure can move!

When we arrived in Verona, Virginia, first stop on our way back home, we were completely charmed by the Shenandoah Valley Campground. What’s not to love about this:

And these:

Some of these:

And a bunch of these:

Temperatures in Virginia topped out at 89 F so when we set up, we had every vent and window wide open.

As soon as the sun went down, our nightmare began.

Noseeums (nasty little biting bugs) by the score began pouring in through our screens. There were thousands of them – they couldn’t resist our lights. We didn’t wanna start blasting bug spray around so we figured we’d just shut off the lights and go to bed early. We wanted an early start in the morning anyway.

As it was still pretty early and our neighbours were having a fire and being rambunctious, we shoved earplugs in and went to sleep. Because we both had our ears plugged, neither of us heard it start to rain.

It was, in fact, a downpour of biblical proportions. We slept on. It wasn’t until I rolled over into a big squishy patch of bed that I discovered that water was pouring in through the vent in the ceiling over my side of the bed. It was all being merrily absorbed by the sheets, blankets, mattress – all things just made for sucking up water.

“Cripes!” said I, or words to that effect. I bounded out of bed, darting madly to and fro, closing open things and feeling about for wet bits. Because I am so unusually alert when I first awaken (I wish I could have said that with a straight face), I reported back to Bob that all was well – no water had gotten in. At least none that wasn’t currently occupying my side of the bed. I got back in the sack, gave Bob a wee shove, curled awkwardly around the soggy zone, and went back to sleep.

A while later, I awoke, as I often do, wondering why the hell Bob has to be so flaming noisy in the morning. This seemed worse than usual, so instead of just pulling a pillow over my head as is my custom, I got up to see what was happening.

Remember when I said that no water had gotten in? I was wrong. To my credit, the one spot I really did check while I was (ahem) sleep-walking and closing things was dry. The rest of the trailer, however, not so much. Suffice it to say my deluge detection skills are not quite up to snuff.

As I shuffled out of the bedroom, there was ole Bob on his hands and knees under the table. He was attempting to sop up a lake with a bath towel. He was already on his third towel and he really didn’t seem his usual cheery morning self. He had upended most of the upholstered cushions and when I grabbed one to move it out of the way, it seemed a lot heavier than I remembered it being. It also peed on my foot which I thought was a bit rude.

My apologies for being off the grid for several days. We sneaked back into Canada (New Brunswick, to be specific) to visit family. We had a wonderful time but the blogging sort of fell by the wayside. Here’s a shot of one of the furrier relatives we went to see:

Her name is Olive and I would have stolen her, but she wouldn’t fit in our trailer! Probably just as well – I don’t think we could afford to feed her. If you’ve ever seen a Newfoundland dog up closely, you’ll know that they’re not in the same league as those little punter purse puppies.

We’re back in Maine now, and guess what the weather is doing! Yup…sigh…still raining. Our puffin-watching tour got cancelled today so we’re gonna try again tomorrow. In the meantime, we farted around hunting down lighthouses and trying to get semi-reasonable photogs of them without getting completely soaked.

The first one was shot while we were still in New Brunswick, but the rest are from today:

Pendlebury Lighthouse, St. Andrews-by-the-Sea, NB, Canada

Cuckold Lighthouse, Maine

Hendrick’s Head Lighthouse, Maine

A couple of other miscellaneous shots of Maine-in-the-Rain stuff:

If the gods are smiling, I should have some puffins photogs to show you tomorrow. Cross yer fingers! (Toes too…)

We’re still camped out in Freeport, Maine. Touch wood, I think it’s finally stopped raining but we’re still under flood warnings. Here’s a shot from yesterday of the Androscoggin River to show you why:

We figured we could either hole up and wait out the weather or damn the umbrellies and get out there and see what we came all this way to see. The biggest challenge was keeping the cameras dry. When I wasn’t holding the umbrella in my teeth to shoot, Bob was holding it for me and muttering colourful expletives. I love that man.

These were shot out on Bailey Island, which is just a gorgeous spot that you can drive to along a seriously scenic causeway. It was really cold and wet, but so so beautiful.

Around noon or so, we went to a wonderful restaurant for lunch called Cook’s Lobster House to sample the local wares (but mostly to get warm.) The food was amazing! When we first arrived, I told Bob I was gonna photog our food like I’ve seen other travel bloggers do. I thought it would be awesome to have shots of us grinning at our fish and scallops and whatnot to remember the meal and the day. I got as far as the (“award-winning!!”) coleslaw. When the actual food arrived, we pounced on it like a pack of piranha and completely forgot about the camera.

(Best coleslaw I’ve ever eaten. Seriously.)

Speaking of lunch, Bob said I shouldn’t post this shot cuz it would gross you out, but I told him that it was my vision of the turbulent nature of life (eyeroll) and that you guys would get that:

That’s the biggest fargin’ gull I’ve ever seen in my life! I looked it up and it’s called a Great Black-backed Gull. They weigh in at just under FOUR pounds!! That’s twice the size of most hawks and about three times the size of a Herring Gull (the one’s most often seen at the coasts)! I swear I thought it looked as big as a bald eagle in flight. In fact, at first glance, I thought it was a bald eagle. I purposely chose a shot that doesn’t quite show you what he’s eating (close your eyes for a sec if you don’t wanna know….it’s a baby eider duck) Please don’t tell Bob I showed you that shot.

Oh, the minor set-back: Apparently the wiring for the hot water heater has zorched itself. We’re going to have to back-track to a place called Lebanon, Maine which has the closest Airstream dealership. Bummer, eh? We were supposed to hit Bar Harbour this morning. Bogus. I’m just glad that the wires burnt themselves up but left the rest of the trailer alone.

I’m sure this will astonish you to hear, but….I’m not a happy camper. We’ve arrived in Freeport, Maine and, rather than describe what it’s like here, I’ll just show you. This is our campground:

(Pretty sure those’re horseshoe pits in that puddle)

(How’s that for irony? That’s not actually a beached boat but a kids’ sandbox gizmo!)

Rather than subject you to more of my whining, I’ll simply say that the bright spot of our very soggy day was going to the LL Bean mother ship and spending an obscene pile of money on bedding (and life jackets – ha ha!). On the way back, we had to dodge “road flooded” signs and several washed out bits of pavement. The news is telling us that it might be time to start rounding up pairs of animals. I wish I was joking. Bob has affixed pontoons to the trailer.